七夕节
by iphis15
Summary: When star crossed lovers die together, they are reincarnated as twins. Crystal/Carol, oneshot. T for Insinuation, homoerotism and some heteroerotism.


It is the night of the Magpie festival. She stares out of her window and sees nothing. She never has, outside of her dreams. Hers is a world of emptiness and shadow.

Tonight, the lovers in the stars, Vega and Altair, will have their reunion. She, too, is looking forward to her own. She has been meeting the girl from a lifetime away in her dreams for one night a year, every year, and one night alone, ever since her fourth anniversary of birth.

Whereas her waking existence is inky and dark and haunting, as are her typical dreamscapes, the dreams she dreams on Qi Xi are completely different. They have light, they have shape, they have vividity. She never knew the color of her own hair, the lines of her own face, the tone of her own skin, but looking upon the other, she knows it is integrally different.

How can you even begin to comprehend color when you see it once in a year? How can you even begin to differentiate the shades, to give them all their proper names? She doesn't know, and she doesn't even try.

* * *

><p>It is the evening of tanabata, or so Carol has been told by her mother-in-law. She is due to marry a Japanese businessman – not of the infamous kind, the perverted, power-hungry stereotype, but a young, honest man with sincere eyes. She might be happier about it if she had ever had the heart to appreciate the masculine sex.<p>

She is wearing a kimono. It is cold, but it's pretty enough, she supposes. Next to her is her fiancé – he is holding a cup of tea, and he is offering it to her. She murmurs her thanks, and she takes it.

"Have you had any more thoughts on our marriage date?" he asks, his voice a smooth tenor. She smiles softly.

"I'm twenty now. I always wanted to marry at twenty-one, when I was a child. Let's do it next year. The day before tanabata."

"Not tanabata itself?"

"Surely the temples will be full on that day. Besides, don't you think the symbolism is better? We will be the moment of waiting. Of knowing the future and embracing it. Won't that be good?"

He laughs in a muted way, and wraps his arms around her. "It sounds perfect, my dear. The day before tanabata it is."

* * *

><p>The blind girl laughs as she runs towards her loved one, long-straight-black hair streaming out behind her. "Carol!" laughs she brightly, with the trace of an accent to it. "Found you!"<p>

The girl with the caramel blonde hair smiles shyly and embraces her when she is close enough. "Crystal," she murmurs. "I missed you."

They talk and they talk and they talk, through the night, about all of the wondrous things that have passed in the year. Carol finally finds the heart to ask.

"Could we meet, in the world outside of dreams? I shall be wed, in a day less than a year, and I fear that, after that, I should lose my chance at you."

"You know it's impossible," Crystal says, blushing dully. "I can't travel. Couldn't you put your wedding off longer?"

"We've been betrothed for six years," Carol says simply. "And my family needs the money."

"I understand," Crystal sighs. "It was the same with me, after all."

"That's right!" Carol says, remembering. "How has your family been?"

"The same. They're not _important_, Carol. Only you are. You're the one I love the most in the world."

"And yet we are separated by the stars. Isn't it cruel?"

* * *

><p>It is Qi Xi once more, and Crystal is again staring blankly out of the window. Tonight, she thinks, will be the last time she can see her childhood friend – even if they can meet again, it will be different, like it was after her sixteenth birthday, when she was a married woman – they could no longer be the same.<p>

When she closes her eyes to sleep, though, she doesn't see the colorful, cheerful girl. Instead, there is more darkness, a flirting touch against her hands, and a voice.

"I'm sorry, Crystal, I'm so sorry. I couldn't face the thought of being married to a man I don't love, could never love, and for that, I gave up my night with you. I'm so, so sorry. I love you, Crystal, always."

"Carol-" she says, her voice catching and cracking. "Please tell me it isn't so—you must be alive still-"

"Oh, but I'm not."

Crystal weeps, but between tears, she manages to speak. "I love you," she says, and then the presence of Carol is gone.

Crystal never wakes up.

* * *

><p>They've always been a bit too close, the Edgley twins. Not in the usual, twinnish way, that so many know well, but closer, even.<p>

They do not care for the thoughts of outsiders, though, for the disapproving voices that want them to become more a part of the world outside of them, because they have each other, and that is all they ever wanted.

Crystal and Carol stand together, looking up at Vega and Altair.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Qi Xi, tanabata and the Magpie Festival are all different ways of referring to the same thing.**

**~Mademise Morte, July 14, 2011.  
><strong>


End file.
